[shevegen]

What an awful idea.

I understand the game designer intent - you want to retain players.

Now you have this unfair competitive advantages that some other players will have over other genuinely new players.

My suggestion would be to focus less on the problem of salvaging old characters and more on being able to provide long-term interest for players in a given game, from the get go.

The only reason where I think that this salvaging is required is because you would have mis-designed the game prior to that, to require players to have to think competitively. But not every player wants to or can be bothered to have to think competitively - some just want to play for fun. And it isn't a lot of fun if they are at a competitive disadvantage when they did not have that big mighty character that others would have had.